New Iowa prison chief discusses her career, vision for agency

June 13, 2019 By O. Kay Henderson Beth Skinner The 47-year-old woman who’s now in charge of Iowa’s prison system says an internship she landed years ago was the turning point in her career path. Beth Skinner’s original goal was “to become a cop,” but Skinner was taking a social work class in 2002 and got an internship working with probation officers. “I’m like: ‘This is the perfect job because it’s part law enforcement, in a sense, and part treatment,” Skinner said during an interview with Radio Iowa. Skinner was soon hired as a probation officer, then elevated to supervisor. She left state government in 2012 and worked as a policy analyst for two national organizations that study how to reduce the number of paroled inmates who commit another crime and get sent back to prison. “I traveled all over the country, talking to various experts and corrections administrators, talking about what works, what doesn’t work,” Skinner said. “What’s implementation like? What are the culture issues? What are the barriers?” Skinner returned to the Iowa in 2015 to manage a federally-funded project to study how those methods worked in Iowa’s prison system. “From directors, to correctional officers and work groups, to treatment directors, to probation and parole…it was really a collaborative effort and, of course, with our community partners and our state agency partners like the Department of Human Services and Workforce Development,” Skinner said. “…That’s what we know when it comes to recidivism reduction. It has to be ‘all… [Read full story]